It was the first time that Michael Bloomberg appeared in the competition. The ex-mayor of New York invested several hundred million dollars in his campaign, launched late. After much hesitation, the billionaire declared himself a candidate in November 2019, arguing that Joe Biden was in a bad position to block the road to Bernie Sanders, and that he saw no one, if not himself, to beat Donald Trump: l goal for which he said he was ready to invest $ 1 billion (or sixtieth of his fortune).
The latecomer preferred to ignore the first four states of the primaries, which require plowing the field and rubbing voters, to focus on Super Tuesday, which he attacked with publicity. He did not skimp on the means to present his balance sheet of mayor and pro-climate and anti-weapons philanthropist: 235 million for the 14 States at stake (against 18 million for Bernie Sanders), including 77 million in California and 56 million in Texas. A team of 2,400 people in more than 200 campaign locations across the country.
Sarcasm
Bet missed. For his first appearance before Democratic voters, the New York billionaire failed to achieve the breakthrough he hoped for, any more than he had convinced during the two debates, in Nevada and South Carolina, to which he participated in February. The billionaire won only one ballot, the Samoan caucus in the Pacific: with 49.9% of the … 350 votes. Which provoked some sarcasm. "Half a billion for six delegates to the Samoa islands"joked conservative (anti-Trump) editorial writer Jennifer Rubin.
Michael Bloomberg is eliminated from the race for delegates in at least six states: Maine, Massachussetts and even Minnesota, where he had invested $ 11 million, his fourth spending item on Super Tuesday.
In several southern states, the failure is bitter, especially since he had made a lot of effort to try to erase from blacks (44% of voters in Alabama, 27% in Virginia and Carolina of North, and 26% in Tennessee) its zeal to use facies controls to reduce crime in New York in the early 2000s.
His campaign team had recruited young people from minorities as a priority. He had presented an economic development plan (7 billion dollars, 6.3 billion euros) to correct the "Systemic racism" which historically prevented the building of capital in black neighborhoods. Plan called "Greenwood Initiative", named after a district of Tulsa (Oklahoma) nicknamed "Black Wall Street" in the early XXe century, before being the scene of a racist massacre in 1921. Result: with 13.9%, the candidate failed to even qualify in this state of Oklahoma.
